Drabbles
by TornadoAria
Summary: Interconnected drabbles of 300, 200, and 100 words. Theme will change each chapter. Character death, spoilers.  Chapter 7: It took a month for the weariness to set in.
1. Chapter 1

300

Kazuya Hatakana knew Shiori's son was special. He knew it as well as she knew it, but they never really discussed it. How could they? When they had first met they had bonded a bit over the loss of their significant others, and Shiori mentioned once that Shuichi didn't cry, and planned the funeral for her. This in itself was not something all that worth noting, but he put the numbers together and realized that Shuichi had been six at the time.

Shuichi was always polite but distant, and Kazuya tried to become closer to him, to get to know him, but he didn't allow it. Shiori told him not to take it personally. He had always been this way, she said to him, he had only recently started being affectionate with her. He asked her for advice on things he liked to do, and she sighed, and shook her head, and confessed that considering their time together, she knew his son better than hers.

He was alarmed at first by the goings-on at night, in and out of Shuichi's room, but Shiori assured him this too was normal. Shuichi rarely slept, she said, and she sounded so tired. You'll grow used to it.

If he did not know then, he knew later, when he offered his stepson a job in the company, and he took it, only to quit a few scant months later, murmuring something about it not being in anyone's best interests. He told Shiori quietly that day that he had to go and he didn't know when he would be back.

When those two boys, no, they were men now, came to the door, and said they needed to speak to Shiori, he wasn't surprised. He held his wife as she cried. The boy was dead.

200

Before Yusuke had died, Keiko could talk to him about anything. But he died and then he came back, and she thought that since she had helped with that last part, there would be no reason for things to change. She understood why, it's not something you just told anyone. She liked to think her willful stubbornness had convinced him that it just wasn't worth it to not tell her everything, and for a time, it was like that.

After he came back from the Makai, they fell into a relationship that wasn't easy but was always honest. If nothing else, they shared each others' burdens, despite the fact that Yusuke had no way of understanding Keiko's stress when she stayed up til four every morning studying, and Keiko couldn't begin to know what Yusuke was going through when he felt the call of the Makai biting at him, the urge to move and fight and do.

That changed, once more, with death. Yusuke refused to talk to her or anyone else about Kurama when all was said and done. "It's over," he told her. "No sense dragging it up."

So Keiko watched Yusuke fall within himself slowly.

100

Kuwabara realized how little he knew about Kurama as he watched him die. Even this was a part of his strategy. How long had he known he was going to do this, how grim was it for him to walk into an un-winnable battle?  
>It worked. That man won the battle but lost the war by a longshot. Hiei was even scarier when he was pissed off and killed him easily a few rounds later. The man didn't have a chance. Hiei won the crown that year. He decreed that none would die the following tournament and that was all.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

300

Keiko and Hiei hadn't ever really had many opportunities to chat. Keiko didn't have a very high opinion of him, to be honest. She thought he was rude and callous, and he didn't seem to think much more of her than 'human that the detective protects.' He was there at the wedding though, standing next to Yusuke uncomfortably in a tuxedo, and he even made a toast at the reception, to her, for being willing to put up with an idiot. She lived with Yusuke in the Makai for a time, and once, when Yusuke couldn't be there, he sent Hiei, to keep her safe. She didn't notice him at first. But soon, she saw herself catching glimpses of him over the days, lazily sitting in a window, watching her carefully.

Finally, she had to know. "Why are you here?"

His answer was simple. "Yusuke sent me."

"He didn't think I could protect myself."

Hiei raised an eyebrow at this. "Does the detective tell you anything?"

"He's not a detective."

"Well at least he got that straight. You're a human," he said, as though it explained everything.

"And he says you're the smart one. You're weak. A liability. Not everyone likes what Yusuke's done, you know."

"Yes, but he's got a good support," she said casually. She didn't like thinking about these things.

Hiei laughed. It was the first time Keiko heard the sound. It was strangely bitter. "Of people who think you'd make a delicious meal."

"Aren't you on Mukuro's side?"

There was silence for a moment. "No."

"Then who's team are you on here?"

He smirked, and this was nearly as bitter as his laugh. "The same one I'll be on until I beat him."

200

Yusuke was always afraid to touch her. She had expected the Yusuke that groped and teased and joked when he got back to the other world, and while she still saw it with some of his friends as he relentlessly teased Hiei and mockingly flirted with Kurama, it was like he was a completely different person when they were alone. She became the initiator of any physical contact. She reached for his hand, for his arm, for his lips, and never the other way around. She wondered what had changed.

She was a bit more aggressive one day, and kissed him a bit like he wished he would kiss her, and he responded eagerly. This eased her worries. She was beginning to worry that something had changed in Makai, and that humans just weren't doing it for him anymore.

The real answer came to her when they broke apart, and she saw a bit of blood on his lips. He took one look at her and apologized until he was blue in the face, telling her he'd take her straight to Yukina. She put a hand up to her lips. It came away bloody. She hadn't even noticed it hurting.

100

Yusuke took a big breath. "Okay. I'm ready," he said, smiling at Kurama.

"Are you positive?"

"It's been a hundred years. I'm tired."

"This is very difficult for me, Yusuke."

"I know," he said, "and I'm sorry, but... I can't do it myself. I miss her, Kurama."

Kurama sighed. "I know."

"It'd been different, I think, if we were able to have kids," he said, yawning.

"I can see that."

"Is it normal to be sleepy?"

Kurama nodded. Yusuke smiled, closing his eyes.

He and Hiei buried him that evening.


	3. Chapter 3

300

"A cop? I thought you hated cops as much as I did," Yusuke said, scowling, cigarette hanging from his mouth.

"A lot's changed since you got yourself smeared across the pavement, Urameshi," Kuwabara replied sourly.

Yusuke scoffed. "Yeah yeah. Thought you were gonna be some great scientist. Can't believe you studied to get into Meiou and then went to college just to chase around punks like us."

"Says the guy who got himself killed twice to run a ramen stand. There's more to bein' a cop than chasin' around kids, you know," he said. "I can really do some good around here, you know, Urameshi?"

"Can't say I do," he said cheekily. "And I do more than run a ramen stand! I'm still training!"

"Yeah, bet you can't wait to get your ass kicked by that Youmi guy again."

"When I'm king, I'll make you take that back," Yusuke snorted.

"Newflash, I'm a human, your rules don't apply to me."

"Hundreds of beings at my bidding? They so do. I could make your job hell."

"You don't always have to be an ass about it," Kuwabara said. "It's a good job."

Yusuke sighed and relented. "Yeah. You'll have a nice middle class home with a beautiful, way-outta- your-league wife, huh?"

"A good happy life," he said, smiling. "It's nice to have things figured out."

"Yeah," Yusuke said, though he didn't really understand. Yusuke, after all, lived for the next big fight. He knew Kuwabara though, and he knew how Kuwabara worked. He needed something to protect, or he would waste away. Kuwabara really was the knight in shining armor Yukina thought he was, Yusuke thought with amusement. "It'll be good for you."

200

It had taken some time for Kuwabara to figure things out. Kuwabara knew he wasn't the smartest man in the world, but still, it shouldn't have taken him this long. It started with a confession.

"Kazuma, I have something to admit to you," his love said quietly.

"Huh? What could it be?"

Yukina bit her lip. "I lied to you, Kazuma."

Kuwabara's eyebrows raised. He supposed she was capable of these things, like all beings, so he nodded for her to go on.

"I wasn't ever permitted to come down to this world," she said. "Nor was I permitted to come back to it the second time."

"What?" he said. "But, Yukina-"

"I'm never allowed back. I've been tainted by the world of men," she said, and she sounded almost venomous. "But that's not true. The Koorime... they shut off their hearts. Just so they can survive. But mine was opened, and that's dangerous to the way they live."

"Yukina- I never had any idea," he said, going to take her hand.

"Someday," she said, "my brother is going to destroy them. I think I want him to."

100

They had their wedding outdoors in the hottest part of Summer. Yukina had a light sheen of sweat across her forehead, but none had ever seen her smile brighter. Her dress was white and red, and Hiei stood next to her. Yesterday, she had cried a bit for her heritage and the tears froze and she kept them. But that was the last time she would. Only the Koorime cried jewels after all, and today, as she declared her love for Kazuma in front of the whole world in the heat and the sun, she was no longer a Koorime.


	4. Chapter 4

I decided to try something a little different- this is a little more connected than the others.

300

Keiko sighed. "I think we need to go our separate ways."

"So... that's it?"

"Yusuke... please don't think-"

"I get it," he said, cutting Keiko off.

She grimaced. "It's not that I don't love you. I didn't wait for you for so long because I didn't love you, you know."

"But you don't now."

"I'm not what you need."

"Say what you mean, Keiko. I'm not what you need.."

"Fine, Yusuke, you're not what I need. You're right. I don't need a big powerful demon lord. I don't need someone who can't sit still long enough to read a book. I don't need someone who can't stop thinking about the next fight. But let's be honest. Do you need me holding you down? Do you need me to keep coming back to? Do you need someone who can't keep up, Yusuke?"

Yusuke huffed, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket and lighting one, and taking a very long drag. "So you're saying you want someone you can compare literature notes with."

"I'm saying that- well, come on, Yusuke. We're not even from the same world anymore."

"Do you think I asked for any of this?" he demanded. "Do you think I wanted to get killed and all the sudden the whole world's in my fucking hands?"

"I can't help it either!"

Yusuke didn't say anything. He leaned against a wall, taking another long drag, and then a deep, calming breath. He dropped the cigarette to the ground, and began to walk away.

"Yusuke- come on. We can still be friends. You know I love you."

"Don't say that," he said darkly.

"What? That I love you?"

"Don't fucking say that."

200

"You look awful, Keiko," her mother said, looking over her daughter as she cut up some cabbage. "Maybe you should turn in early."

Keiko chopped a piece rather viciously. "I'm not sick."

"What's wrong? Is it Yusuke again? Has he gone missing?"

"No," Keiko said, with another chop.

"Then what happened?"

Keiko sighed, and tilted her head back. "We broke up."

"Oh," her mother said. "Who?"

"Me," she said.

"Why, Keiko? After all this time, why now?"

Keiko sighed. "Our lives... they never would've fit together, Mom, this is a long time coming. He's... he's really something different."

"And you don't think you could've made it work?"

Keiko couldn't help but sob. "Mom... I can't do this to him."

"Do what, honey? Come here!" She said, wrapping her arms around her daughter.

"I can't, I can't!"

"Then go apologize," her mom said to her, "if you're that upset. He loves you."

"That's the problem!" she cried, straightening herself. "I've gotta go."

"Keiko- we only have one short life," her mother said as Keiko rushed towards the door.

"I know."

100

"This is the life, huh?" Yusuke said. "Two kids, a dog. Nice."

"Yeah," Keiko said, smiling. "It is. I'm happy."

"Good," Yusuke replied.

"They're both exceptional students," Keiko beamed. "Top of their class."

"You don't say?"

"And you?"

"I'm getting by. Won the last one."

"Really? I bet you had the time of your life!"

"It was pretty fun, yeah," he said, grinning. His face fell after a moment. "I miss you, Keiko."

She bit her lip. "I love you."

"I love you too."


	5. Chapter 5

300

Shiori smiled as her son walked through the door. He had done a very good job making himself age so far, but it was said the dying could see through illusions, and Shiori was on her deathbed at ninety-two years old. He looked every bit of seventeen to her. His hair was as bright and his eyes as wise and vivid as it had ever been. Not a wrinkle graced his face now. It was nice to see the real him.

"Hello, Mother," he said, cheerily, with a smile.

"Hello, Shuichi," she replied, through the cords and tubes.

He had never married. He had gone on an o-miai once, at her request, dutifully, and she had thought then that maybe they had hit it off, but he disappeared for a month, and upon his return, had informed both Shiori and the girl that he wasn't able to marry at the moment, and wished the girl good luck on her endeavors. He didn't seem particularly disappointed to see her go, either. She understood now.

"How are you today?"

"How come you never told me, Shuichi?" She asked instead, taking his hand.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mother," he replied easily, worry not even tinging his face.

"They say the dying can see through illusions, Shuichi," she said, gently.

"You're not dying-"

"Oh, stop it. I imagine you've lived long enough to know what a dying woman looks like."

There was a long, almost painful pause. "How long have you known?"

"Just now," she said. "But I've long suspected, Shuichi, that you were special."

Another pause. "I'm sorry."

"I know," she said. "I love you, Shuichi. No more lying."

"Of course not, Mother."

She smiled.

200

"I just didn't expect it so soon," Yusuke sighed, wiping his eyes, before tears had the chance to form, standing over a grave.

"It happens to everyone, eventually," Kurama told him.

"I know. But... she's only fourteen years older than me..."

"Such is immortality," Kurama said.

"I don't know if I like it."

"It's painful. But... it gets less so as we go on."

"Was it like this with Shiori for you?" he asked, his voice making an odd choking sound.

A pause. "Yes. It was."

"It's my mom. She made me. She kinda sorta even raised me. This is weird. How could she just... not be here?"

"She's still alive, somewhere," Kurama reminded him. "You were dead once, you should know."

"I know!" he said, perhaps a bit more forcefully than the situation called for. "I know."

"It's all right, you know," Kurama said to him. "To be upset, I mean."

"I ain't a Mama's boy like you," he replied.

Kurama smiled. "Of course you aren't," he said, and thought fondly of his second meeting with this boy next to him.

100

Yukina had never known her mother. The elders had been frightened that the woman's deviant ways would corrupt the child even further than sharing a womb with the Imigo already had, did you see the girl's eyes, after all? But Yukina did have Rui, and Rui told her such stories, wonderful stories about her mother, and she took her during every festival to the dead tree that marked her mother's grave.

One day Rui had another, new story. A story about a boy, a boy Yukina knew.

Yukina, on that day, decided that her mother's footsteps might be worth walking in.


	6. Chapter 6

I'm admittedly stretching the 'interconnected' part on this one, but I hope you'll be able to see a general theme.

I'd also like to take this moment to thank my readers and reviewers. You make it worth writing. Thank you all so much!

300

Yukina sometimes wondered if he regretted it. Fourteen, she thought, is awfully young for anyone, human, or not, to decide what they want, forever and ever.

Not that he had ever showed any signs of regret. Far from it. Forty years in, as she was beginning to be mistaken for his daughter, he brought home flowers weekly, wrote poetry, still told her every day that he was the luckiest person in the world. Yukina happily accepted them, as she had accepted the ring thirty-five years ago.

He accepted much from her as well, though Yukina thought often that it was an unfair bargain. He gave her flowers and rings, and she gave him a childless existence and occasionally frostbite in the moments between wake and sleep, when she wasn't sure where she was, or why a man would be so close. He accepted strange behavior in the winter and stranger in the summer. He accepted her not always being able to live up to his ideals, even his honor code. He gave her all of himself, and accepted all of her.

He would argue with her if she brought that up, though. He would tell her that she gave him joy, and hope, and strength. Flowers, he would say, could never ever match up to that.

She did love him, and she told him that. She didn't know if it matched up, though. She wasn't sure that she knew how to love the way he knew how to love. For him, though, for the man that had rescued her and loved her and accepted her thoroughly, she would try. She couldn't think of anyone more worthy.

Yukina would smile as her thoughts went on that direction. She would tell him, someday, that she was so much luckier than he was.

200

Mukuro smirked down at her heir, currently laid out across the floor. He was cocky, and brash, and rude, the little fuck. She liked that. It's what made him stand out. Hiei never pretended to be humble. It was a nice little change of pace. Not that everyone else bowed and scraped before her, no, but Hiei walked right in when she summoned him, thinking he was her equal. She tried to cure him of that, but even when the kid broke, he was damned well determined to take out everything with him. He earned his spot, she thought as he climbed up, ready, eager to go again. She knew for a fact that she had broken a few ribs with that last hit. Most would have stayed down. Most would've also acknowledge her superiority. Hiei was far from most.

He wiped a bit of blood trickling from his mouth, and she knew if she blinked she would miss him coming at her. She caught him coming in from the side, and blocked his hit deftly, but he was nearly as good as she was these days. She liked that too.  
>She was gonna keep him around for a while.<p>

100

Most people thought of the wind as intangible, untouchable, but Jin thought that if that were true, if you couldn't touch it, it wouldn't be real, and Jin knew the wind was real like he knew that he hated the feel of the floor. He could touch it. There was a storm brewing and Jin could feel it in his bones, in his fingers and toes. Soon the wind would be whipping up stronger than trees and even buildings. . He would give anything to be able to fight Yusuke through the rain and in the wind, right at this moment.


	7. Chapter 7

300

It was no secret that Hiei's patience was the farthest thing from infinite, and that any allowances made on his part were few and far between.

There were flaws in the immigration system, as there are indeed in any system. It took just once for a youkai to find out that the kind, pretty young woman working in the Refuge was not just an ice demon, but a Koorime.

It didn't take much longer for humans, their greed easily equal to that of demons, to get involved .

They planned carefully, and indeed it began without a hitch. They made sure her husband was working at the time, after all. The girl fell for the story when the newly-immigrated youkai called her up, telling her that he was incredibly confused by some of this, could you come over please? She did so, and they were waiting for her. There were wards, but she had been through this already.

Yukina could have gotten out of this trap on her own.

Hiei decided that she shouldn't have to try.

He burned the place to ground, whoever inside that wasn't Yukina be damned.

Koenma had little choice in the matter, really. Rules were rules, and a deal was a deal.

Kurama and Yusuke likewise had little choice when they fled along with him.

Kuwabara was simply grateful to have his wife unharmed, and refused to take part in anything that would make him seem otherwise.

They fled the Spirit Defense Force all through Makai. It was almost a game.

Yusuke had never felt the thrill of being chased before, and his enthusiasm was catching. Kurama felt like he was a thief once again, and even Hiei was beginning to enjoy himself.

It took a month for the weariness to begin to settle in.

200

"Hatanaka residence, Shiori speaking."

"Mother?"

"Shuichi? Shuichi, you're alright! Where are you? Do you need help?"

"Mother- I'm fine. Everything's fine."

"You just disappeared, Shuichi-"

"I know, Mother," he told her. "I'm sorry for worrying you."

"Can you tell me what's going on, Shuichi?"

"I decided to go on vacation suddenly, and when I got here to Paris, there were all sorts of troubles with my passports and phones and such."

"I wish you would stop lying to me, Shuichi."

There was a pause on the line as her son chose his words carefully. She wished he wouldn't. "A friend is in trouble," he finally said, slowly, as if testing the waters.

"What kind of trouble?"

Another pause, just long enough for Shiori's heart to jump into her throat. "Trouble with the highest of authorities, Mother."

"What?" She said with a choke. "What are you going to do? What are you getting involved with, Shuichi? Which friend?"

"Don't worry, Mother," he told her. "The situation is under control."

"Under control? Shuichi-"

"Mother, I have to go now."

The dial tone sounded.

100

"I am never busting your ass out of jail again! Next time, you can rot!"

"You don't mean that, come on Keiko!"

"You better believe I mean that!"

"You love me!"

"That's not the point! The point is that just because your friends do something reckless doesn't mean you get to go run away with them without even telling me!"

"C'mon! Keiko! Look, Keiko. I solemnly swear that the next time one of my friends does something stupid, I will tell you first."

Keiko glared, and huffed, but let him give her a kiss.


End file.
